Deserted by Cara Dee

Deserted by Cara Dee

Gray Nolan had survived a kidnapping where he was supposed to have been auctioned off to the highest bidder. He had also survived being stranded on an island, under siege from a different set of foes, and throughout the hell they’d all endured, their motto had been “Leave no man behind.”

Recovery was different. Gray wanted to be left alone to fight his demons—and to get over the attachment he’d formed for the man who’d saved him more than once. But in a time when darkness threatened to consume him, salvation arrived as he set out to uphold the promise he’d made to a friend. Eight-year-old Jayden stormed into his life, fresh off the streets of Philadelphia, and lit up Gray’s bleak existence… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny
  • Human trafficking
  • Child sexual abuse mentioned
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Kidnapping
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian

Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian

He comes to her more dead than alive, a towering black-clad stranger riddled with bullets and rapidly losing blood. As she struggles to save him, veterinarian Tess Culver is unaware that the man calling himself Dante is no man at all but one of the Breed, vampire warriors engaged in a desperate battle.

In a single erotically charged moment, Tess is plunged into his world – a shifting, shadowed place where bands of Rogue vampires stalk the night, cutting a swath of terror. Haunted by visions of a dark future, Dante lives and fights like there is no tomorrow… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child sexual abuse mentioned
  • Incest mentioned
  • Nonconsensual blood-drinking
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa

The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa

Violently pushed from their ancient farming village of Beit Daras, a Palestinian family tries to reconstitute itself in a refugee camp in Gaza. The men here, those who have escaped prison or the battlefields, worry over making ends meet, tend their tattered pride, join the resistance. The women are left to be breadwinners and protectors, too.

Nazmiyeh is the matriarch, the center of a household of sisters, daughters, granddaughters, whose lives threaten to spin out of control with every personal crisis, military attack, or political landmine. Her brother’s granddaughter Nur is stuck in America; her own daughter’s son, traumatized in an Israeli assault, slips into another kind of exile; her daughter has cancer and no access to medicine. Their neighbor, the Beekeeper’s wife, will extract the marijuana resin to shrink her tumor, but it is also Nazmiyeh’s large heart and zest for life that heals, that will even call Nur back from the broken promise of America and set her on a new path.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Child neglect
  • Eating disorder (bulimia)
  • Emesis
  • Torture, implied
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

In The Clearing by JP Pomare

In The Clearing by J.P. Pomare

Amy has only ever known what life is like in the Clearing. She knows what’s expected of her. She knows what to do to please her elders, and how to make sure life in the community remains happy and calm. That is, until a new young girl joins the group. She isn’t fitting in; she doesn’t want to stay. What happens next will turn life as Amy knows it on its head.

Freya has gone to great lengths to feel like a ‘normal person’. In fact, if you saw her go about her day with her young son, you’d think she was an everyday mum. That is, until a young girl goes missing and someone from her past, someone she hasn’t seen for a very long time, arrives in town.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Physical child abuse
  • Staged suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Drowning
  • Animal attack
  • Cults
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

We Now Return to Regular Life by Martin Wilson

We Now Return to Regular Life by Martin Wilson

Sam Walsh had been missing for three years. His older sister, Beth, thought he was dead. His childhood friend Josh thought it was all his fault. They were the last two people to see him alive.

Until now. Because Sam has been found, and he’s coming home. Beth desperately wants to understand what happened to her brother, but her family refuses to talk about it—even though Sam is clearly still affected by the abuse he faced at the hands of his captor.

And as Sam starts to confide in Josh about his past, Josh can’t admit the truths he’s hidden deep within himself: that he’s gay…. Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Child sexual abuse recounted
  • Kidnapping
  • Disappearance of a child
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Shattered by Lee Winters

Shattered by Lee Winters

Shattergirl, Earth’s first lesbian guardian—a brilliant but aloof alien superheroine who can hurl and destroy large objects—is refusing to save people and has gone off the grid.

Lena Martin, the street-smart tracker with a silver tongue and a disdain for the rogue guardians she chases, has only days to bring her home. As the pair clash heatedly, masks begin to crack and brutal secrets are exposed that could shatter them both.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Lesbomisia
  • Misogyny
  • Child sexual abuse
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Death of a mother
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Choker by Elizabeth Woods

Choker by Elizabeth Woods

Sixteen-year-old Cara Lange has been a loner ever since she moved away from her best and only friend, Zoe, years ago. She eats lunch with the other girls from the track team, but they’re not really her friends. Mostly she spends her time watching Ethan Gray from a distance, wishing he would finally notice her, and avoiding the popular girls who call her “Choker” after a humiliating incident in the cafeteria.

Then one day Cara comes home to find Zoe waiting for her. Zoe’s on the run from problems at home, and Cara agrees to help her hide. With her best friend back, Cara’s life changes overnight… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut-shaming
  • Child sexual abuse, implied
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder
  • Strangulation
  • Animal death, including the death of a dog, mouse & cast
  • Bullying
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

She Rises by Kate Worsley

She Rises by Kate Worsley

It is 1740 and Louise Fletcher, a young dairy maid on an Essex farm, has been warned of the lure of the sea for as long as she can remember–after all, it stole away her father and brother. But when she is offered work in the bustling naval port of Harwich, as a lady’s maid to a wealthy captain’s daughter, she leaps at the chance to see more of the world. There she meets Rebecca, her haughty young mistress, who is unlike anyone Louise has encountered before: as unexpected as she is fascinating… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Deadnaming & misgendering
  • Paedophilia
  • Sexual harassment
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

For 150 years, above the Scottish cliffs, Caldonbrae Hall has sat as a beacon of excellence in the ancestral castle of Lord William Hope. A boarding school for girls, it promises a future where its pupils will emerge ‘resilient and ready to serve society’.

Rose Christie, a 26-year-old Classics teacher, is the first new hire for the school in over a decade. At first, Rose feels overwhelmed in the face of this elite establishment, but soon after her arrival she begins to understand that she may have more to fear than her own ineptitude… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Lesbomisia
  • Paedophilia & grooming
  • Sexual harassment
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Child abuse
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Transphobia & misgendering
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Rape & rape of a child
  • Physical & emotional child abuse
  • Child neglect & abandonment
  • Intimate partner violence & abuse
  • Eating disorder
  • Graphic attempted suicide, suicidal ideation & self-harm
  • Drug abuse
  • Graphic death of a child